Friday, June 12, 2009
Blog Post 7
Motivation was a key part of this reading. As future teachers, it is important that we understand what motivates each child. Growing up, I wasn't very interested in school, and for every A that I brought home, my parents would give me $10. That is probably the only reason why I wanted to get good grades. If a subject is not interesting to our students, they will find no urge to do well in the activities or even learn the subject. motivation is also a huge key role when dealing with special needs students. many of them have no ulterior motives to learn so they cannot understand why they need to "learn." Thus teaching tools for students like such are reinforcements. The student is motivated to do the work because they will receive candy or stickers or cookies, whatever is motivating to them. Without these reinforcements, the likeliness that they would do what we ask of them is slim to none. What turns the wheel sin my head or the students who come from poverty whose families are not that into their education, where do they get their motivation from. After working in a very poor school this past semester, I have come to find they do it for themselves. They want to show their parents that they can become something, even if their parents may have minimum wage jobs, and they want the opportunity to go to school and continue their education. Of course there are those students who have absolutely no interest in school and even reinforcement will not work. Those are the red flag students that we must help right away.
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Blog 8 responce to Morgan
ReplyDeleteHi, Morgan
I agree with you when you stated” As future teachers, it is important that we understand what motivates each child. I also disagree with you when you sate” motivation is also a huge key role when dealing with special needs students. many of them have no ulterior motives to learn so they cannot understand why they need to "learn." Thus teaching tools for students like such are reinforcements. The student is motivated to do the work because they will receive candy or stickers or cookies, whatever is motivating to them. Without these reinforcements, the likeliness that they would do what we ask of them is slim to none”
I have worked with many special need children over the last 5 or so years and I have never have to give them anything that I was not already giving the other students. Children with special needs are more willing to learn something new than some of the other students. Children with special needs may take longer to learn the concept that you are trying to teach, but they are so eager to please that they will general try very hard without cookies or candy.
Blog 8 in response to Morgan Segal:
ReplyDeleteI was also "bribed" into getting good grades with getting paid money for A's and A-, and while the motivated me party to get good grades, I was mostly motivated to get better grades then my friends. When it becomes a competetion at least for me and my friends we tend to do well and push ourselves harder.
I also wanted to note that I agree with you when it comes to kids not "understanding why they need to 'learn'". I know that in school I would ask why something worked the way it did, and the teachers would just say because, or asking when I would need to know this and they would say, because it's going to be on a test. I think that kids would be more motivated if you can connect the information to the real world, I also think that they would learn the information better if there was a logical reason behind it, instead of giving the explanation of "beacause."
I agree with Morgan and Holmes' comments regarding motivation, particularly communicating why material is being taught in the classroom and how it relates to their lives outside of school. When they can see how concepts could be applied to real life situations and work towards effectively applying information outside the classroom or in other contexts, this not only improves student motivation but also creates more "connections" between previously covered material, current material and whatever in their lives is relevant to them. This relates to concepts covered in chapter 4: Connecting new material to existing knowledge, identification of relationships between ideas or concepts and transforming the learning material in meaningful ways are all discussed as a way to foster deep learning (203).
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